Your support in needed! The Sengwer people in Kenya is being forcibly evicted from its territory

The Sengwer people – an indigenous hunter-gatherer community in the Cherangany hills in Kenya- is being forcibly evicted from its territory.

Many of us have been following closely the story, as recent as last January, but is something that has been taking place since the year 2007. These evictions are directly linked to the World Bank’s funding of the Kenyan government’s REDD+ ‘readiness’ , through the bank’s Natural Resource Management Project (NRMP).

The Sengwer people are being falsely accused by the Kenyan government of being ‘squatters’ in their own ancestral land and also of being behind the destruction of the forests in the Cherangany hills, which is a complete lie. The government of Kenya claims that evicting the Sengwer people will help in the conservation of the area but in reality is nothing more than an opportunity for interested parties to profit monetarily.

More importantly, this grim situation presents an opportunity for those of us who are completely opposed to false solutions to climate change in the form of market mechanisms such as REDD+ to denounce the financialization of nature and to demand that we implement the real solutions to the climate crisis such as moving away from fossil fuel use.

We are hoping that more organizations will sign on to it! To do so, please feel free to send an email to either Ruth Nyambura from African Biodiversity Network at: ruth@africanbiodiversity.org or Dipti Bhatnagar from FoE at dipti@foei.org

February 25, 2014
Download here the full letter in pdf format with the final list of sign-ons
We, the No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) together with the undersigned organizations and individuals, strongly condemn the massive evictions...